Defiant Saddam refuses to plead
Iraq's deposed leader Saddam Hussein has refused to enter a plea after detailed charges were formally presented at his trial in Baghdad.
The chief judge read out specific charges against him relating to the killings of Shia Muslims in 1982.

"This is no way to treat the president of Iraq," Saddam Hussein said when asked to plead guilty or not.

After Saddam and seven co-defendants heard the charges against them, the defence starting presenting its case.

Under the Iraqi legal system, the court first hears the prosecution evidence and then the judges decided on the specific charges to be brought.

I am the president of Iraq according to the will of the Iraqis and I am still the president up to this moment
Saddam Hussein

The charges read out by Chief Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman relate to the defendants' alleged roles in the crackdown on the town of Dujail in 1982 after a failed assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein was accused of ordering:

The illegal arrest of 399 people
The torture of women and children
The destruction of farmland
The murder of nine people in the early days of the crackdown
The murder of 148 people in the later phase of the crackdown
Saddam Hussein, who if found guilty could face the death penalty, refused to enter a plea.

"I can't just say yes or no to this. You read all this for the sake of public consumption, and I can't answer it in brief," he said.

"You are before Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq. I am the president of Iraq according to the will of the Iraqis and I am still the president up to this moment."

The judge ordered the court to record that Saddam Hussein had denied the charges and then read out charges against the other defendants.

The first of these was Barzan al-Tikriti, the former head of the intelligence service, who was charged with the same crimes as his half-brother, Saddam Hussein.

"All you said are lies, everything you mentioned is a lie," Barzan al-Tikriti said when asked how he pleaded.

All eight defendants either refused to enter a plea or pleaded not guilty.

With the charges read out, the defence began its case, starting with Ali Daih Ali, a former Baath party official and one of the lesser known defendants.

Five witnesses were called to the stand before proceedings were adjourned until Tuesday. Three days of hearings are expected this week.

Protection

Since the trial began in October, the frequently interrupted court sessions have focussed on marshalling evidence against Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants.

Now it is the defence's chance to build its case for each of the accused, starting with the minor figures and building up to Saddam Hussein.
The defence phase is expected to last at least a month.

Defence witnesses will be under tight protection and some may testify from behind screens to protect their identity.

The trial has been marred by the killing of two defence lawyers, and in January the first chief judge resigned, amid accusations from government officials that he was too lenient towards the defendants.

Once the defence concludes its case, there will be a long recess while the court considers its verdict.

Recordings

Khamis al-Obeidi, a defence lawyer, told Reuters news agency that dozens of witnesses, including some from Dujail, would testify to the ex-leader's innocence.

The prosecution, which finished its case last month, presented evidence including audio recordings and signatures on execution orders linking the defendants to the killings.

The court also heard a report by handwriting experts confirming Saddam Hussein signed documents ordering the killing of the 148 Shia villagers in 1982.

Defence lawyers have insisted the signatures are forged. They have also contested the impartiality of the handwriting experts, who they say are linked to Iraq's interior ministry.

A MadCowMorningNews investigation into the ownership of the DC9 airliner caught carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine in Mexico last month has uncovered explosive new details about some of the many lingering mysteries still surrounding the 9.11 attack.

San Diego defense contractor Titan Corporation, already implicated in the fraudulent bankruptcy of a shadowy St. Petersburg FL company which owned the DC9 "Cocaine One" flight busted in Mexico, employed a Lebanese contractor who assisted Mohamed Atta and other terrorist hijackers in Venice, Florida.

For Titan, the revelation marks the latest in a remarkable series of recent scandals, including employees charged with torture and rape at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a record $26 million fine and conviction for fixing a Presidential election in the African nation of Benin, and growing infamy for being the biggest money backer of disgraced and soon-to-be-jailed former Congressman Randy âDukeâ Cunningham.

The story begins when, while researching âWelcome to TERRORLANDâ three years ago, we discovered that Makram Chams, a Lebanese national, had provided significant logistical support for Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi.

Chams, we learned, had even entertained recently-convicted Zacharias Moussaoui in his apartment in Venice.

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Times' Frank Rich: Any 'witch hunt' for traitors should begin in the White House
05/13/2006 @ 2:57 pm
Filed by RAW STORY

Defending journalists who have been castigated as traitors for exposing government blunders, New York Times columnist Frank Rich writes that any "witch hunt" for traitors should begin in the White House, RAW STORY has found.

"What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude," Rich writes.

"It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press' exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security," Rich continues. "That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for traitors, that's where it should begin."

Ex-CIA Director Porter Goss should not be allowed to "escape into retirement unexamined," Rich argues, calling him "so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaida double agent."

"His mission was not to protect our country but to prevent the airing of administration dirty laundry, including leaks detailing how the White House ignored accurate CIA intelligence on Iraq before the war," Rich writes.

Rich ends his column by suggesting that if Air Force General Michael Hayden is confirmed by the Senate to replace Goss then "someone should charge those senators with treason, too."

Excerpts from Rich's "Will The Real Traitors Please Stand Up?" set for Sunday's edition of the New York Times:

#
When America panics, it goes hunting for scapegoats. But from Salem onward, we've more often than not ended up pillorying the innocent. Abe Rosenthal, the legendary New York Times editor who died last week, and his publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, were denounced as treasonous in 1971 when they defied the Nixon administration to publish the Pentagon Papers, the secret government history of the Vietnam War. Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes. It was precisely those lies and mistakes, of course, that were laid bare by the thousands of pages of classified Pentagon documents leaked to both The Times and The Washington Post.

This history is predictably repeating itself now that the public has turned on the war in Iraq. The administration's die-hard defenders are desperate to deflect blame for the fiasco, and, guess what, the traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the CIA's secret "black site" Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism.

#
TIMES SELECT SUBSCRIBERS CAN READ FULL RICH COLUMN HERE

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Former NY Times reporter Judith Miller to assert she was warned of large scale attack before 9/11

RAW STORY
Published: Thursday May 18, 2006

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In AN ALTERNET EXCLUSIVE THURSDAY, former New York Times reporter Judy Miller tells Rory O'Connor and William Scott Malone about the story she'll regret for the rest of her life -- the fact that an anonymous White House source told her in July 2001 that an NSA intelligence report predicted a large al Qaeda attack, possibly on the continental United States, RAW STORY has learned.

âI think everybody knew that an attack was coming -- everyone who followed this. But you know you can only 'cry wolf' within a newspaper... before people start saying there he goes -- or there she goes -- again!" Miller says in an interview.

"I remember the weekend before July 4, 2001 in particular, because for some reason the people who were worried about Al Qaeda believed that was the weekend that there was going to be an attack on the US or on major American target somewhere," Miller recounts. "It was going to be a large, well-coordinated attack."

Two months later -- on September 11 -- ALTERNET.ORG says Miller and her editor at the Times, Stephen Engelberg, both remembered and regretted the story they "didn't do."

"There was always a lot going on at the White House, so to a certain extent, there was that kind of 'Cry wolf' problem," Miller says. "But I got the sense that part of the reason that I was being told of what was going on was that the people in counter terrorism were trying to get the word to the President or the senior officials through the press, because they were not able to get listened to themselves."

READ THE FULL ALTERNET STORY HERE.

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NEW YORK (AP) â A police officer working undercover after the Sept. 11 attacks was called as a surprise witness in the trial of a Pakistani immigrant accused of plotting to blow up a subway station.

The officer, testifying under an alias because he is still involved in active investigations, said he heard Shahawar Matin Siraj rant against the United States in the months following the 2001 attacks and predict terrorists would inflict more harm.

He said Siraj declared in December 2002 that, "The mission was not complete on 9/11 because it did not hit Wall Street."

Prosecutors are trying to counter Siraj's entrapment defense by offering evidence that he was talking about terrorism long before he met a police informant in late 2003.

Siraj, 23, was arrested on the eve of the 2004 Republican National Convention on charges he plotted to blow up a subway station in the dense shopping district that includes Macy's flagship department store.

Defense attorneys have characterized Siraj as a naive young man who was entrapped by a crafty older informant in a phony plot that never got off the ground.

Siraj testified Monday that he was a peaceful man until the informant inflamed his anger by showing him pictures of prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Siraj said he helped cook up the subway plot to impress the informant, Osama Eldawoody, but later tried to back out when Eldawoody couldn't guarantee that civilians would not be hurt.

Prosecutors revealed for the first time Tuesday that the undercover officer had contact with Siraj for 13 months in 2002 and 2003.

The officer, who testified Wednesday, told jurors he met Siraj at an Islamic bookstore near a Brooklyn mosque that police put under surveillance shortly after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center. He recounted conversations when he said Siraj advocated a holy war against the United States for its support of Israel and argued that targeting both countries for suicide bombings was justified.

Siraj also predicted that "if the United States went to war in Iraq, there was going to be terrorist attacks here," he said.

The officer was the trial's last witness. Closing arguments were expected next week. If convicted, Siraj could face up to 20 years in prison.

&quot;Confusion... first sign of a bad relationship-whether personal, societal or governmental&quot;

WASHINGTON (CNN) --A former landlord of two of the September 11 hijackers was an FBI informant at the time, knowledgeable sources confirm to CNN.

The two hijackers, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, lived in San Diego in the fall of 2000 and were taken in by a Muslim man after he met them at a local Islamic center. The landlord had been an informant for the FBI, supplying information about the Islamic terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

The revelation, first reported by Newsweek, focuses renewed attention on possible mistakes made by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence prior to September 11. Newsweek reported that the FBI informant lived in close quarters with the two future hijackers.

"The FBI concedes that a San Diego case agent appears to have been at least aware that Saudi visitors were renting rooms in the informant's house," Newsweek reported.

Some members of the congressional committee investigating the intelligence failures and the September 11 attacks knew about the relationship between the landlord and the FBI, and the point will probably come up when the panel holds public hearings, expected later this month.

U.S. intelligence officials said that in January of 2000, when Almidhar and Alhazmi attended a meeting of known terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that fact was communicated by the CIA to the FBI. Yet it was not until August 23, 2001, that the CIA warned the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to watch for the two men, and that they might try to enter the United States.

By that time, Almidhar and Alhazmi had been in the U.S. for more than 11 months.

The FBI contends the agency was never told about the two men before August 23 and says it can find no record of any such communication between CIA and FBI to show the information might have been overlooked. The FBI has maintained that position in its dealings with congressional investigators and has asked the CIA to document, if possible, having sent word earlier.

The San Diego landlord, reached by CNN on Monday, has refused comment.

The Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months before Sept. 11, 2001, that al Qaeda hoped to attack airlines, according to a previously undisclosed report by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks.

The report detailed 52 such warnings to FAA leaders between April 1 and Sept. 10, 2001, about the terrorist organization and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

The commission report, written last August, said five security warnings mentioned al Qaeda's training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation. None of the warnings specified what would happen on Sept. 11.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency received intelligence from other agencies, which it passed on to airlines and airports. But "we had no specific information about means or methods that would have enabled us to tailor any countermeasures," she said.

Brown also said the FAA was in the process of tightening security at the time of the attacks. "We were spending $100 million a year to deploy explosive-detection equipment at the airports," she said. The agency was also close to issuing a regulation that would have set higher standards for screeners and given it direct control over the screening workforce.

Many similar problems with aviation security were detailed in the Sept. 11 report released last summer. Al Felzenberg, former spokesman for the commission, said the government only recently completed a declassification review of the 120 pages of additional material, parts of which have been redacted.

The unclassified version, which was reported by the New York Times, was made available by the National Archives yesterday.

According to the report:

â¢ Aviation officials were "lulled into a false sense of security" and "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures."

â¢ The FAA did not expand the use of air marshals or tighten airport screening for weapons. It said FAA officials were more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays and easing air carriers' financial problems than thwarting a terrorist attack.

Information in this report was available to members of the Sept. 11 commission when they issued their public report last summer. That report also criticized FAA operations.

[quote]CIA 'torture' lawsuit thrown out
A US court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a German citizen who says he was kidnapped and beaten by the CIA.
Khaled el-Masri aimed to sue former CIA chief George Tenet and other officials for their alleged role in the "extraordinary rendition" programme.

Mr el-Masri says he was picked up in Macedonia in 2003 and flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he alleges torture.

The judge did not rule on the truth of the allegations, but said letting the case proceed might endanger security.

Rights group the American Civil Liberties Union brought the case on behalf of Mr el-Masri - who was never charged with any terrorist offences.

Besides Mr Tenet, the case named 10 other CIA employees, as well as three other companies and their employees.

In times of war, our country must often take exceptional steps to thwart the enemy
Judge TS Ellis
US District Court, Virginia

However, the district court judge in Virginia rejected the challenge, saying Mr el-Masri's "private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets".
Lebanese-born Mr el-Masri had demanded compensation and an apology from Mr Tenet and several other CIA figures.

He has alleged he was beaten and injected with drugs after being seized near Macedonia's border with Albania, before being taken to Afghanistan and held for five months.

'Exceptional steps'

In his ruling, Judge TS Ellis stressed that by rejecting Mr el-Masri's lawsuit he made no judgement on the strength or otherwise of his allegations.

"[The result reached here] is in no way an adjudication of, or comment on, the merit or lack of merit of Mr el-Masri's complaint," he said.

"Further, it is also important that nothing in this ruling should be taken as a sign of judicial approval or disapproval of rendition programmes.

"In times of war, our country, chiefly through the executive branch, must often take exceptional steps to thwart the enemy."

His case has attracted the attention of German Chancellor

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
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Tuesday, May 16, 2006
9/11 Commission report is a lie
RICHARD CURTIS
GUEST COLUMNIST
Writing about a speech by one of the members of the 9/11 Commission, P-I columnist Joel Connelly claimed: "Each of us needs to understand why we are doing what we are doing." ("Sept. 11 show the flaws with protocol," May 8)
Indeed! The problem is that the "why" we have been told appears to be a complete fiction.
Connelly seems to assume that because the 9/11 Commission was bipartisan that we should accept its conclusions and recommendations. But is that true? Is the commission's story credible?

The commission's conclusions and recommendations should be totally rejected. Its story is full of lies, distortions and omissions of fact. Following are two of the more than 40 reasons why the official story about what happened on 9/11 is untrue.

First, who were the hijackers? We do not know. None of those named appear on any of the passenger lists released by the airlines. Most important, six of the men named by the government are still alive and have never even been to the United States. We know that because European media (as reported by The Associated Press, the London Telegraph and the BBC) have interviewed them. It is not a matter of mistaken identity not being noticed or someone using a false passport. The commission insists that the people they named were the hijackers but that claim is demonstrably false.

If that most basic claim is false, and the information was
available to the commission (which it was), and the commission still claims that it has given us "a full account" of what happened that day based on "exacting research," it's clear that the members are lying. In his book, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," Dr. David Ray Griffin documents all that and concludes the whole report is one long lie.

Second, in the months after 9/11 all of the surviving New York City Fire Department personnel who were on the scene were interviewed. Those oral histories were recorded and withheld from the public until Aug. 15, 2005. Only after losing in court three times did the city of New York finally release them. All 503 are now posted on The New York Times Web site.

Why did the city fight so hard to keep them from the public?

It turns out those oral histories reveal details about what was happening in the World Trade Center buildings that are completely inconsistent with the tale told by the commission. Dozens of firefighters and medics reported hearing, seeing and feeling explosives going off in the buildings that collapsed. Why were there explosives, very powerful explosives by all accounts, going off in the buildings? More disturbing, why was the pattern of those explosives identical in some important ways with the pattern used in a planned implosion (or controlled demolition of a building)?

In spite of Connelly's faith in what commission members say, the report seems to be an obvious cover-up. The question that we all need to ask is: What is the commission covering up? Was 9/11, in fact, an inside job?
Richard Curtis, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Seattle University and a member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth; http://www.st911.org.

Quote:Impossible to Prove a Falsehood True:
Aircraft Parts as a Clue to their Identity

by George Nelson
Colonel, USAF (ret.)

The precautionary principle is based on the fact it is impossible to prove a false claim. Failure to prove a claim does not automatically make it false, but caution is called for, especially in the case of a world-changing event like the alleged terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The Bush administration has provided no public evidence to support its claim that the terror attacks were the work of Muslim extremists or even that the aircraft that struck their respective targets on September 11 were as advertised. As I will show below, it would be a simple matter to confirm that they were - if they were. Until such proof is forthcoming, the opposite claim must be kept in mind as a precaution against rushing to judgment: the 911 hijackings were part of a black operation carried out with the cooperation of elements in our government.

In July 1965 I had just been commissioned as

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For the first time since the Abscam scandal a quarter-century ago, multiple lawmakers face criminal and ethics investigations that are tarnishing Congress, already low on public approval.

Three separate bribery investigations by the Justice Department were bad enough news for lawmakers. But the woes only increased last week when the House ethics committee broke a 16-month partisan gridlock and announced investigations into the same matters.

"We have an entire generation who imagines their member of Congress in an orange jumpsuit," said Paul Light, a New York University professor of public service, referring to the common prison uniform. "It's like members of Congress don't have any shame."

Six House members and a senator were convicted in Abscam, the bribery scandal that became public in early 1980 and ended a golden, post-Watergate era of congressional reforms.

Instead of dwelling on new laws to regulate campaign donations, provide greater access to government records and protect privacy, the public thought about Abscam.

The name came from Abdul-scam, after the FBI established a phony business â Abdul Enterprises â and had "representatives" offer bribes to lawmakers.

In a forewarning of what could happen now, Congress also extracted its own punishments in Abscam. One lawmaker was expelled and two resigned as they faced expulsion. The voters defeated the others.

Polls conducted recently and at the time of Abscam scandal show similar results, indicating that corruption plays a major role in the public's loss of confidence in Congress.

An AP-Ipsos poll conducted at the beginning of this month showed a 71 percent disapproved of the way Congress is handling its job, while only 25 percent of those surveyed approved.

A Gallup Poll in June 1980 showed a 56 percent disapproval and 25 percent approval. A CBS News/New York Times poll a month later had the disapproval rate of 51 percent and approval at 32 percent.

Last Wednesday, leaders of the House ethics committee announced full-blown investigations of Reps. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and William Jefferson, D-La.

Ney's former chief of staff has pleaded guilty to conspiring to corrupt the congressman on behalf of Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist at the center of the influence-peddling probe that has gripped Capitol Hill for months.

Separately, a technology company executive has pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson and a former Jefferson aide has pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting bribery of the congressman.

Both lawmakers deny wrongdoing.

The committee leaders also announced a preliminary inquiry into whether other House members were bribed by the defense contractors who corrupted former Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California. He pleaded guilty and is serving an eight-year sentence.

By investigating Ney, the ethics committee can learn more about Abramoff's favors for lawmakers and what help those lawmakers gave the lobbyist's clients. Abramoff has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with federal investigators.

In addition, in a guilty plea, Ney's former chief of staff enumerated 16 actions he said his old boss took on behalf of Abramoff clients. Neil Volz acknowledged he conspired to corrupt Ney, his staff and other members of Congress with trips, free tickets, meals, jobs for relatives and fundraising events.

Light, the NYU professor, said he doubts the ethics investigations will lower the poll numbers because those numbers cannot go down much more. But he said the committee's decision will have an affect.

"It confirms to the American public their worst fears about what motivates members of Congress," he said.

Light said there is no indication that the current Congress will follow the latest bribery scandal with reforms.

"We haven't seen, in response to this scandal, any major legislation coming forward that would prevent this type of scandal in the future," he said.

Labour MP Michael Meacher has arranged a special screening at the Houses of Parliament on 14th June. Loose Change, a 90-minute, $10,000 film by relative unkowns Korey Rowe and Dylan Avery, questions the official line about the cause of the collapse of the Twin Towers.
This film is, unsurpsingly, the subject of a heated debate. You can read about it and find links to the official site and free Google Video download on Wikipedia(video)". Please note that several aspects of the article's neutrality are disputed.
Meacher says: "I think 9/11 is so important that as many people as possible should see this film. That's what I hope to achieve. It really deserves to get the fullest exposure" (reported in Broadcast, 12th May edition).
(The film isn't listed on IMDB/IMDBpro. Dylan Avery has a credit for production artwork on Freedom back in 1995

Quote:Labour MP Michael Meacher has arranged a special screening at the Houses of Parliament on 14th June. Loose Change, a 90-minute, $10,000 film by relative unkowns Korey Rowe and Dylan Avery, questions the official line about the cause of the collapse of the Twin Towers.
This film is, unsurpsingly, the subject of a heated debate.

<img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/applause.gif" alt="" title="applause" />

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The Beast's A to Z of Post-9/11 Political Opportunism
By Matt Taibbi
Even we felt sorry for Mayor Anthony Masiello a few weeks back. Our fearless leader's deranged July 5 outburst, in which he labeled graffiti artists who spray-painted "Fuck the Mayor" on walls around Delaware park terrorists, was a textbook example of everything not to do when seeking to ride the backs of terrorists, real or imagined, to political advantage.

This game has been going on for hundreds of years, and the dos and don'ts have been fairly well established. When seeking to garner support for new draconian legislation, or for additional funding, do avoid whenever possible pointing to specific acts when describing your terrorist threat. With political opportunism, a terrorist in the bush is always worth two in the hand; unless you have a pile of bodies and a sufficiently large exploded structure to point at, people will always be more impressed by the fear of what terrorists might do than what they've already done.

Graffiti artists in Delaware Park? Not scary at all. A lead from "reliable intelligence sources" that Hamas is planning to kidnap Drew Bledsoe? Not only do you have our vote, just tell us where to send money! As everyone from Stalin to Hitler to Augusto Pinochet has learned over the years, even children aren't afraid of the Bogey Man once you open the closet door; in politics, you keep the door closed.

Here's another "do": when you play the terrorist card, do ask for a huge mandate, not a little one. As most people with the stomach to think about these things have figured out by now, big-time politics differs very little from corporate deal-making. And any good businessman knows: when courting investors for a project, you always ask for a lot of money, even if you don't come close to needing it. Never ask for funds to open up a hot-dog stand; ask for funds to open up a national chain of hot-dog stores, one that requires additional funding for hot-dog merchandising projects, multiple-media hot-dog entertainment ("Radio and TV are just a start! We're going to sign Drew Barrymore!"), a hot-dog web browser service, hot-dog escorts...

The reason? People who have a lot of money are never very interested in small deals. Big-timers like big-time investments; everything else bores them. When you throw out a bill founded on a terrorist threat, the quarry should never be just graffiti artists. It should be everyone. Politics may be a move-the-chains business, but, as has been proved amply over the last nine months, the terrorist threat is an end zone play. Masiello went for three yards; he should have gone for six points.

We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, and the events of the last year or so have left historians with an extraordinary record of political opportunism to consider. As we sit here quietly going about our business in a small town like Buffalo, we ought to be aware that all around us, all over the outside world, governments and politicians are attempting to pull off, at a breakneck pace, an unprecedented series of end runs that are certain to fundamentally change the world as we know it. There's not a whole lot we can do about it, but we ought to at least be aware that it's happening... and understand that, far from being a singular event based on a unique tragedy, the terrorism blame game is an age-old technique that, like a virus, always runs its course in the same way.

Incidentally, we here at the BEAST speak with some personal experience on the matter. Just three years ago, in the summer of 1999, we were living in Moscow and anticipating the seemingly inevitable demise of President Boris Yeltsin. Both Yeltsin's family and his administration had been seriously tainted by a number of gruesome financial scandals, and poll numbers had a Yeltsin rival, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, looking like a lock to assume power in the 2000 presidential elections.

Then a funny thing happened. A series of raids by Islamic Chechen rebels in the south of the country re-ignited a military conflict that had been dormant since
An outhouse
A hole
1996. After a brief period of backdoor maneuvering, an unknown ex-KGB operative named Vladimir Putin was installed as Prime Minister amid promises of an extreme crackdown in Chechnya. Having heard all of this before, the Russian public paid only minimal attention, and Luzhkov continued his march to power... But then, just like that, a pair of apartment buildings in Moscow and a city called Ryazan were leveled by high-powered explosions, leaving hundreds dead. Public outrage soared to unprecedented levels, and the tough-talking Putin--who vowed, gangster-style, to "whack the bandits in their outhouses"--was given a limitless mandate to crush the terrorists. Full-blown war ensued, dissent at home was crushed, and voila--Putin was elected in a landslide just a few months later.

Evidence eventually surfaced that Putin had bombed the buildings himself (and the journalists from a paper called Novaya Gazeta who broke that story were beaten and, in the case of one, shot) but by then it was a done deal. Once you've got a terrorist to point a finger at, a skillful politician knows the world is his.

No sane person would ever compare George Bush to Putin. For one thing, he's much taller. For another, it would hard to argue that the Trade Center bombings weren't a real terrorist act, while virtually every intelligent person in Russia had immediate doubts about the Moscow/Ryazan apartment bombings. Nonetheless, both presidents do clearly use the same playbook. The only difference is the language. A KGB-gangster-turned politician whacks people in outhouses; an ex-Texas governor smokes them out of foxholes.

Whatever. We don't begrudge politicians their tactics. Everyone's got to make a living. Our only issue is technique. If you're going to do a thing, you ought to do it right. If Mayor Masiello is thinking of trying this again, he might consider sticking to the time-honored tradition. Here's our take on what that is, the BEAST guide to taking excellent political advantage of terrorism:

STEP ONE: FIND A TERRORIST.
This is harder than it sounds. Only in the rarest of cases does an undeniable terrorist event on the scale of 9/11 actually drop in your lap for you to make use of. In many cases, unreasonable people are likely to insist that what you are inclined to call terrorism is actually separatism, domestic opposition, or just plain old run-of-the-mill crime.

The great masters of the terrorism blame game, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, found extremely effective and creative ways around this problem. Hitler went the direct route; he simply went ahead and burned down the Reichstag building and blamed it on a whining communist. Not everyone believed him--remember, 87 Social Democrats voted against the extraordinary anti-terrorist powers he asked for in the wake of the Reichstag fire--but the trick worked well enough, and 12 years later, in 1945, Germans were still massacring people all over the world in belated response to the nebulous anti-German terrorist threat.

Stalin, as is typical of a Russian dictator, took the more labor-intensive route. Although he did actually kick off the festivities of the 1930s by arranging a phony terrorist act--the assassination of a high-ranking party member named Alexander Kirov--the real strength of his anti-terrorist campaign came through the painstaking process of arresting and intimidating thousands of people and forcing them to admit publicly to having planned terrorist acts. The amazing, never-before-seen spectacle of formerly respectable politicians lining up one after the other to confess to having planned to do everything from put broken glass in canned food products to blow up bridges and dams gave him the mandate he needed to massacre the needed 10 million or so malcontents. Ironically, the anti-terror campaign left his country more or less helpless when a foreign power actually invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

It is convenient when searching for a terrorist threat to have an actual enemy on hand who is in the habit of blowing up things and people on your territory. In this sense, countries like Israel, Sri Lanka, Russia, and India were at a distinct advantage when 9/11 came their way. All four of these countries were home to ethnic separatist movements that could be convincingly linked to international terrorism once the opportunity arose. It is always important in this case to issue expressions of sympathy with the more overtly innocent victim--in this case the United States--and to pound home as often as possible that the new victims of terrorism should finally understand your plight. Russian government spokesman Sergei Yastrzhemsky offered a skillful example when he announced, within a day after the 9/11 attack, that the "Western media has finally changed its information policy toward Chechnya."

If there are no violent belligerents handy on your territory, the mere presence of undesirables will often do the trick. Only a few days after 9/11, Australian Defense Minister Peter Rieth implicitly linked immigrant asylum-seekers to terrorism, and demanded that, in light of the World Trade Center bombing, Australia ought to be allowed finally to keep all of those darned immigrants out. He got what he wanted. A few months later, the Australian government put forward a comprehensive anti-terrorism bill in response to the 9/11 bombings that allowed the government to secretly detain even children in order to combat the terrorist threat, among other things.

A problem can arise for the gain-seeking politician who, far from being faced with a terrorist threat, is actually a terrorist himself. For this kind of person, for example the ruthless dictators Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, there may appear at first to be little advantage to seeking out a fictional terrorist threat. After all, if there are no obstacles to enacting repressive laws to begin with, why bother making the effort to cook up a plausible excuse for them? The answer is that even in this case, there is a tangible benefit to finding yourself some terrorists, and that is the extremely rewarding sensation of temporary international legitimacy. Therefore Lukashenko acted shrewdly when, in December of last year, he enacted the "Law of the Republic of Belarus on Fighting Terrorism." This law, which was so nakedly an act of political opportunism that even the dead Nazi soldiers buried in the Belarus forests had to laugh at it, permitted Lukashenko's government to legally enter any home at will and confiscate any property deemed necessary to the cause of counter-terrorism. Not surprisingly, the law turned out to be one of the few moves he has ever made that did not instantly inspire violent international disgust.

Uzbekistan, meanwhile, having long ago disposed of any domestic opposition in possession of so much as a bamboo pole of offensive capability, simply went ahead and declared an unarmed Islamic group called Hizb-ut-Tahrir a terrorist threat. No one believed them, and in fact one of his own courts actually took the extreme step of convicting four policemen for murder after they beat a suspected Hizb-ut-Tahrir member named Ravshan Haidov to death, but the rest of the world was sufficiently convinced by Karimov's vigilance that it began to talk about Uzbekistan as a valuable ally in the fight against international terrorism. The United States found the act convincing enough that it felt confident in setting up an airbase on Karimov's territory, and even made noises about keeping it there permanently, setting off what is sure to be a lucrative bidding war for Uzbek hospitality between Russia and the United States. Whatever your situation, it is always possible to find a terrorist. The trick is what to do with him once you get him.

STEP 2: MAKE A WISH-LIST
Trying to determine what best to do with the political mandate offered by your newfound terrorist threat is similar to trying to make a decent meal at home. Before you go to the supermarket, your first step should always be see what's already in the cupboard. There may be plans you already have underway that can be bolstered or expedited by bellowing at length in public about the need for anti-terrorist vigilance.

Without a doubt, the absolute master of this aspect of the terrorist blame game is the United States. While we may lack the political will of a Russia or a Nazi Germany to blow up huge numbers of our own citizens in order to blame it on somebody else (although we have never been above doing that in other countries), there is no doubt that we know how to take practical advantage of a terrorist threat better than anyone. Americans are the ultimate pragmatists; give us an empty field and a pile of rocks, and within six weeks we'll turn them into a factory that makes a 700% annual profit selling ice skates, key chains, and slag. In the case of 9/11, our government instantly resubmitted into play about 30 different initiatives that it had already been trying to achieve, without success, for some time.

That air base in Uzbekistan? We were trying to set one up there as early as June, 2001. Oil drilling rights in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge? Bumbling-but-persistent Senator Frank Murkowski had been drooling over them for years, but after 9/11, he suddenly decided that it was American dependence on foreign oil that was funding terrorism, and instantly got what he wanted. An Caucasus oil pipeline that runs through Afghanistan? That pesky Taliban was an obstacle before, but thanks to the sudden need to occupy that country--itself thanks to the precipitous decision to declare Afghanistan the haven for international terrorism--those plans can now begin to take real shape.

Electronic surveillance? The ACLU bitched about Carnivore before, but just let them try now. An expansion of controversial free-trade agreements? A double-whammy of opportunistic benefit suddenly appeared in the wake of 9/11. Not only could anti-globalization protesters be publicly compared to terrorists, but administration spokesmen now could--and did--insist that poverty brought on by the absence of free trade had caused the bombings. A plan for an expansion of NAFTA that would cover all the Americas called Fast Track, long desired by the Bush administration, suddenly became an urgent priority.

On September 30, a U.S. trade representative named Robert Zoellick wrote an article in the Washington Post called "Countering Terror With Trade" that suggested that Fast Track was the best way to bring about the international security we needed. While denounced by whiny leftist political observers as shameless opportunism, Zoellick's stance had the White House's ok, and the stage was set for Fast Track to become political reality.

Another important thing to remember, in making up your wish list, is that your counter-terrorism proposals need not make any sense at all. What is crucial in your demands is your apparent sincerity in your desire to vanquish the enemy and your insistence that your objective is the answer. A great example of this is the Bush administration's insistence upon pushing its Missile Defense project after 9/11, with the explanation that the events of 9/11 had clearly indicated the need for such a program. Logically, of course, the WTC attack had explicitly proved the worthlessness of missile defense, but the Bush administration was wise not to let this affect its strategy. If anything, failure to enthusiastically tie 9/11 to a need for missile defense might have called the whole program into question.

Countries with a less specific connection to 9/11 were wise to limit themselves to one or two fiercely-desired political objectives. In the case of the Israelis, it was the bold expansion of Jewish settlements and the incitement of an expanded conflict with the Palestinians that, given the worldwide political climate, they were bound to be able to conduct with unusually wide international support.

The Russians played a small number of angles, but all of them with consummate skill. First, they secured the de facto support of the West for the prosecution of their insane, completely hopeless war in Chechnya, atrocities and all. The country also mined a decade of experience in playing up its utter incompetence to police itself to secure $20 billion in international funding to destroy and/or monitor its nuclear material, which of course might "accidentally" fall into the hands of terrorists. $20 billion is a lot of money; some of it is bound to get lost somewhere...

Whatever your wish list includes, make sure as you lobby to fulfill it that you remember two things. One, affect the utmost sincerity in your desire to crush terrorism. Two, do whatever you can to make sure that victory remains as far away as possible, which brings us to...

STEP THREE: START AN OPEN-ENDED FOREIGN WAR THAT PROMISES TO GO ON BASICALLY FOREVER
A war that has a chance of being won quickly is of little practical use to anybody. You can buy a lot more with eternal vigilance than, say, three months of vigilance. Although the Bush administration has performed admirably on this score, no one yet has understood this concept better than Stalin.

Stalin never had the balls to actually launch a foreign invasion--his one attempt, against Finland, ended with the entire Soviet army utterly humiliated at the hands of nine Finns on skis--but in his grand internal war, he was very careful never to run out of enemies. While on the one hand playing up the infinite dastardliness of the Trotskyite-fascist wreckers, imbuing them with a seemingly limitless persistence in their goal of traveling vast distances to torment even drunken factory workers in Siberia, he constantly shifted the grounds of battle from one segment of society to another.

When the wreckers were purged from the party, he moved on to the military. When the military was tamed, he moved on to the arts community. When most of them were dead, he moved on to physicians; in the famous "Doctors' Plot," he alleged a vast conspiracy among Soviet doctors to aid the fascist cause. He got around to Jews surprisingly late, in his famous "Cosmopolitan" purges in the fifties. In any case, he was able to do this by painting the enemy as a nebulous and ever-shifting belligerent, indefatigable in his evil, requiring a permanent offensive response.

The United States has taken much the same approach to terrorism. Unlike the Gulf War, when we had one simple military task to perform, the War on Terrorism was instantly declared to be open-ended, one that "might go on for a long time." Despite the fact that there was presumably only one group of actors responsible for the Trade Center Bombings, the White House made it a point to state immediately that the list of enemies would be expanded on the go, as new threats were determined.

"The Afghan theatre has been the first battle but it won't be the last," said Donald Rumsfeld. "The existence and development of weapons of mass destruction in countries that are on the terrorist list [Iraq, Iran and North Korea] means we have to do our task [urgently] before the terrorists get their hands on [them]."

At this writing, plans are afoot to invade Iraq, and the White House has made it clear that the War on Terrorism exists not only abroad but at home, in the hearts of men, making final victory virtually impossible to achieve, even in the event of an occupation of the entire planet.

The benefit of open-ended conflict is most clearly seen in its ability to help bureaucracies permanently justify their existences. If the war on drugs had a target victory date, hundreds of thousands of law-enforcement bureaucrats would be left to actively work for the elimination of their jobs. Had the Cold War been made hot, the military of one side or the other would have been looking for work before long. Colombia would have a tough time getting aid from the United States if it ever managed to rid itself of FARC guerillas. Of all the rules of the terrorist blame game, this one is the most ironclad; your enemy can never be defeated.

Actually securing an open-ended conflict is not always so easy, however. The best conceivable solution is to pick for an enemy a rebel insurgent group that wears beards, smells bad, lives in thick brush and mountains, and which, even given a best effort, you can never finally defeat. Russia, Columbia, the U.S. during Vietnam, and about two dozen African republics have had the good fortune to have enemies such as these. When the political chips are down, those guys in beards are always there, waiting to give you a boost.

You are also lucky if your enemy happens to be an ethnic group that, like your own, will never, ever reconcile with you, even if a thousand years pass. Israel, India, Pakkistan, the Yugoslav states, the Rwandan tribes, all of these groups have enemies that need never go away.

But if ethnic hatred is not a factor, and if you have absolute power to conquer anybody, anywhere, as we happen to have right now, you have a problem. Then the task is not choosing an enemy, but describing him correctly, which means moving to...

STEP FOUR: DESCRIBE YOUR ENEMY AS A MINDLESS, REASONLESS EVIL
Given superior force and a reasonable opponent, one can always negotiate a peace. When wars are rooted in reasons, people are always looking for ways to end them. Therefore the only way to continue to garner permanent support for your anti-terrorist effort is to make sure that your enemy is understood to be completely and totally insane.

You can see this truism at work everywhere, and not just at the national level. Even here in Buffalo, just look at the response to the Zoo vandalism business. There was no discussion of why the kids had attacked those lorikeets; it was understood immediately that it happened because black people just like to break stuff. Newspapers called the vandals "animals," "miscreants" and "cretins," and just left it at that. When you put it that way, why not just occupy all of East
SOVIET:
Trotskyites just hate
socialism and
the working class
NEO SOVIET:
terrorists just hate
our way of life
Buffalo with cops?

After 9/11, the Bush administration, as well as the national media, was very careful to outline exactly what had gone on. "These people just hate our way of life," said President Bush. "They hate freedom," wept Dan Rather. Both lines have been repeated ad nauseum since then, which underscores the effectiveness of the technique.

It's not like the line hasn't been used before. Here's a fairly typical quote from a 1938 edition of Pravda: "There is no person in the world more disgusting to every honest worker than that vile and traitorous enemy, avenging the exposure of Trotskyism for its great and boundless hatred toward socialism and the working class."

Once people buy into the idea that the enemy is completely crazy, and hates you just because, they will accept the idea that he's bent on infiltrating every aspect of your existence, just to piss you off. Once you're there, you've hit the jackpot.

STEP FIVE: THE ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE AND RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY LAST GODDAMN PROBLEM
During the Super Bowl this year, the Office of National Drug Control Policy launched a series of TV ads that claimed that people who buy drugs support terrorism. Only a month or so before, a trade lawyer named Robin Mazer had written an article in the Washington Post arguing that people who bought pirated goods--anything from unlicensed CDs to unlicensed brand-name t-shirts--were supporting terrorism. Both ploys were absolutely correct applications of the terrorist blame game strategy.

The whole point of having a meaningful terrorist threat is its utility in extending its use to anything and everything. A terrorist who is limited in his objectives is not a worthy enemy. If we content ourselves with the idea that our enemy is mainly interested in blowing up one big building, then we've soon enough digested the problem, and we're back to wondering why our lives feel so empty, and our leaders seem like such morons.

The terrorist threat only works if it leaves us in a state of mental paralysis, leading a life without issues or uncertainties, focused completely on the single objective of Progress in the War. Life in such a circumstance is a dream, a sort of vegetative bliss devoid of questions or responsibilities. The final victory of the terrorism blame strategy comes at the level of ordinary people like ourselves. For politicians, opportunism in the face of terrorism means the chance to do something. For ordinary people, opportunism in the face of terrorism means taking advantage of the chance to do nothing, and think about nothing. It's like winning the lottery; a lifetime license to sit around and let your whole life be determined by one random event.

The only thing that can spoil it for all of us is a bumbler like Tony Masiello, who cheapens the terrorist threat and makes it seem phony. Message to the Mayor: Keep it real. We want this one to last.

&quot;Confusion... first sign of a bad relationship-whether personal, societal or governmental&quot;

Note - As we remember, in what seemingly was a genuine bin Laden tape relseased after 911, the alleged worldwide 'master terrorist' stated emphatically that he had NOTHING TO DO WITH 911. And now, in this alleged new tape, he now claims total responsibility for the attacks of September 11. Someone can't keep their story straight... -ed

Bin Laden - 'Moussaoui Not 911 Terrorist'
ITV.com
5-23-6

Osama bin Laden has said Zacarias Moussaoui had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, according to a web site audiotape.

Moussaoui was the only person convicted in a US court for the terrorist attacks which claimed several thousand lives in 2001.

Bin Laden said he had personally assigned tasks to the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks on US cities on September 11.

"The truth is that he has no connection whatsoever with the events of September 11. I am certain of what I say because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers ... with the raids," said the speaker who sounded like the leader of Al-Qaeda.

The authenticity of the tape could not be verified. It was posted on a Web site often used by Al-Qaeda.

Moussaoui was sentenced on May 4 to life in prison with no chance of release, ending four and a half years of legal wrangling over his fate.

The 37-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy in connection with the attacks, in which hijacked airliners were flown into buildings in New York City and Washington DC.

Some US officials initially said they believed Moussaoui was to have taken part in the September 11 attacks as a 20th hijacker. Others later said he was supposed to have been part of a second wave of attacks that were not carried out. May 4: Moussaoui formally sentenced to life Apr 29: Al-Qaeda video surfaces

"We haven't heard from him in a long time," Bush told reporters at the White House. "I truly am not that concerned about him."

C-Span Video of Comment
(466kB WMV)

Bush's attitude to ex-CIA asset bin Laden proves he is a nemesis wheeled out of his casket whenever the 9/11 terror factor is required.

"The elevation of the threat level in New York, and New Jersey, and Washington DC is a serious reminder, a solemn reminder, of the threat we continue to face." [8/2/2004]
WMV video download (372kB)

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled. [USA Today 5/10/2005]

The following graph shows how Bush's approval ratings benefited from terror alerts:

Click image for full size

Osama bin Laden is, quite literally, a weapon of mass convenience.

<img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/cheers.gif" alt="" title="cheers" />

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
Go ahead invite Yoda to a Frog leg dinner

Quote:May 24, 2006
"The Highest Levels?"
ABC News' Brian Ross reported tonight that
the Jack Abramoff bribery scandal "has led FBI investigators to some of the most powerful members of Congress," namely Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL).

Ross reported that "based on information" obtained by investigators, Hastert is "very much in the mix of the corruption investigation."

Ross and co. say the investigation centers on a letter Hastert wrote to interior sec. Gale Norton blocking a casino on an Indian reservation that would benefit tribes repped by Abramoff. The letter was written after a Signature's fundraiser.

(This bit of info is old news, but if investigators are focusing on it, then many other members who wrote similar letters could be in trouble.)

The report quoted a Hastert spokesman as saying Hastert was not aware he was being scrutinized and had not been asked by DoJ to turn over any information.

Posted at 06:30 PM

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
Go ahead invite Yoda to a Frog leg dinner

Indeed! The problem is that the "why" we have been told appears to be a complete fiction.

Connelly seems to assume that because the 9/11 Commission was bipartisan that we should accept its conclusions and recommendations. But is that true? Is the commission's story credible?

The commission's conclusions and recommendations should be totally rejected. Its story is full of lies, distortions and omissions of fact. Following are two of the more than 40 reasons why the official story about what happened on 9/11 is untrue.

First, who were the hijackers? We do not know. None of those named appear on any of the passenger lists released by the airlines. Most important, six of the men named by the government are still alive and have never even been to the United States. We know that because European media (as reported by The Associated Press, the London Telegraph and the BBC) have interviewed them. It is not a matter of mistaken identity not being noticed or someone using a false passport. The commission insists that the people they named were the hijackers but that claim is demonstrably false.

If that most basic claim is false, and the information was available to the commission (which it was), and the commission still claims that it has given us "a full account" of what happened that day based on "exacting research," it's clear that the members are lying. In his book, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," Dr. David Ray Griffin documents all that and concludes the whole report is one long lie.

Second, in the months after 9/11 all of the surviving New York City Fire Department personnel who were on the scene were interviewed. Those oral histories were recorded and withheld from the public until Aug. 15, 2005. Only after losing in court three times did the city of New York finally release them. All 503 are now posted on The New York Times Web site. Why did the city fight so hard to keep them from the public?

It turns out those oral histories reveal details about what was happening in the World Trade Center buildings that are completely inconsistent with the tale told by the commission. Dozens of firefighters and medics reported hearing, seeing and feeling explosives going off in the buildings that collapsed. Why were there explosives, very powerful explosives by all accounts, going off in the buildings? More disturbing, why was the pattern of those explosives identical in some important ways with the pattern used in a planned implosion (or controlled demolition of a building)?

In spite of Connelly's faith in what commission members say, the report seems to be an obvious cover-up. The question that we all need to ask is: What is the commission covering up? Was 9/11, in fact, an inside job?

Richard Curtis, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Seattle University and a member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth; http://www.st911.org.

&quot;Confusion... first sign of a bad relationship-whether personal, societal or governmental&quot;

A MadCowMorningNews investigation into the ownership of the DC9 airliner caught carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine in Mexico last month has uncovered explosive new details about some of the many lingering mysteries still surrounding the 9.11 attack.

San Diego defense contractor Titan Corporation, already implicated in the fraudulent bankruptcy of a shadowy St. Petersburg FL company which owned the DC9 "Cocaine One" flight busted in Mexico, employed a Lebanese contractor who assisted Mohamed Atta and other terrorist hijackers in Venice, Florida.

For Titan, the revelation marks the latest in a remarkable series of recent scandals, including employees charged with torture and rape at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a record $26 million fine and conviction for fixing a Presidential election in the African nation of Benin, and growing infamy for being the biggest money backer of disgraced and soon-to-be-jailed former Congressman Randy âDukeâ Cunningham.

The story begins when, while researching âWelcome to TERRORLANDâ three years ago, we discovered that Makram Chams, a Lebanese national, had provided significant logistical support for Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi.

Chams, we learned, had even entertained recently-convicted Zacharias Moussaoui in his apartment in Venice.

Breaking news from the forest where no one's around

Makram Chams owned a Kwik-Check convenience store in Venice, where the biggest overseas money transfer to the terrorists, $70,000 from the UAE., was sent, according to the testimony of FBI agents during the 9.11 Commission hearings.

Actually the FBI testimony never mentioned Chams, or his store.

They did however show the receipt for the money order at the final hearing of the 9.11 Commission, which we attended. And we were already familiar with the address where the money order went: 201 Nokomis Avenue.

Makram Cham's Kwik-Chek... Strangely, Chams left town soon after the 9.11 attack, abandoning a thriving convenience store which has stood vacant ever since.

In a story in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, reporter Earle Kimel, who first broke the story of Mohamed Attaâs American girlfriend, Amanda Keller, called Chams' abandoned store âA pocket of urban blight in the otherwise smartly tailored suit of downtown Venice.â

Just another freak coincidence?

An understanding of what Makram Chams had b

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
Go ahead invite Yoda to a Frog leg dinner

If you are a friend, subscriber, past guest, listen and then relisten. Pass it on to every outlet and every email list, group you have. This information is EXPLOSIVE. The more of us that know this information, the greater the chances I won't be killed for presenting it, and the greater the chances for a real revolution in America's thinking processes. Go beyond the explosions, destruction of evidence, etc., and learn who BENEFITTED and HOW on 9/11 to find out who the Corporate Fundamentalists are that were behind it all.

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
Go ahead invite Yoda to a Frog leg dinner

Quote:Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 29 May 2006
Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

"We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them," said Diana Farsetta, one of the group's researchers. "I would say it's pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air."

Ms Farsetta said the public relations companies commissioned to produce these segments by corporations had become increasingly sophisticated in their techniques in order to get the VNRs broadcast. "They have got very good at mimicking what a real, independently produced television report would look like," she said.

The FCC has declined to comment on the investigation but investigators from the commission's enforcement unit recently approached Ms Farsetta for a copy of her group's report.

The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.

Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer's product. One example cited by the report was a Hallowe'en segment produced by the confectionery giant Mars, which featured Snickers, M&Ms and other company brands. While the original VNR disclosed that it was produced by Mars, such information was removed when it was broadcast by the television channel - in this case a Fox-owned station in St Louis, Missouri.

Bloomberg news service said that other companies that sponsored the promotions included General Motors, the world's largest car maker, and Intel, the biggest maker of semi-conductors. All of the companies said they included full disclosure of their involvement in the VNRs. "We in no way attempt to hide that we are providing the video," said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel. "In fact, we bend over backward to make this disclosure."

The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. Spokesman Craig Aaron said more than 25,000 people had written to the FCC about the VNRs. "Essentially it's corporate advertising or propaganda masquerading as news," he said. "The public obviously expects their news reports are going to be based on real reporting and real information. If they are watching an advertisement for a company or a government policy, they need to be told."

The controversy over the use of VNRs by television stations first erupted last spring. At the time the FCC issued a public notice warning broadcasters that they were obliged to inform viewers if items were sponsored. The maximum fine for each violation is $32,500 (Â£17,500).

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

"We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them," said Diana Farsetta, one of the group's researchers. "I would say it's pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air."

Ms Farsetta said the public relations companies commissioned to produce these segments by corporations had become increasingly sophisticated in their techniques in order to get the VNRs broadcast. "They have got very good at mimicking what a real, independently produced television report would look like," she said.

The FCC has declined to comment on the investigation but investigators from the commission's enforcement unit recently approached Ms Farsetta for a copy of her group's report.

The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.
Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer's product. One example cited by the report was a Hallowe'en segment produced by the confectionery giant Mars, which featured Snickers, M&Ms and other company brands. While the original VNR disclosed that it was produced by Mars, such information was removed when it was broadcast by the television channel - in this case a Fox-owned station in St Louis, Missouri.

Bloomberg news service said that other companies that sponsored the promotions included General Motors, the world's largest car maker, and Intel, the biggest maker of semi-conductors. All of the companies said they included full disclosure of their involvement in the VNRs. "We in no way attempt to hide that we are providing the video," said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel. "In fact, we bend over backward to make this disclosure."

The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. Spokesman Craig Aaron said more than 25,000 people had written to the FCC about the VNRs. "Essentially it's corporate advertising or propaganda masquerading as news," he said. "The public obviously expects their news reports are going to be based on real reporting and real information. If they are watching an advertisement for a company or a government policy, they need to be told."

The controversy over the use of VNRs by television stations first erupted last spring. At the time the FCC issued a public notice warning broadcasters that they were obliged to inform viewers if items were sponsored. The maximum fine for each violation is $32,500 (Â£17,500).

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
Go ahead invite Yoda to a Frog leg dinner

Quote:Bush's agents recently visited Mark Feldstein's home and flashed their badges saying they were there to retrieve classified documents.
Frederick Sweet

Recently accelerated actions by the Bush administration to put a stop to the American public's access to government records is shocking and scary. It can plunge America into a tyrannical abyss rivaling the worst days of Nazi Germany or of the Stalinist Soviet Union. This is not an exaggeration.

As Marie Cocco wrote in "What Is Bush Hiding?" (Washington Post, 4/30/06), "This administration is not the first to select for public airing secrets that are a political help, such as its claim there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while seeking retribution against those who reveal secrets that [politically] hurt. The politics of revenge can be reversed in an election. The rewriting of history cannot [be reversed]."

Tyranny's Practical Consequences

Four decades ago when I was a graduate student working on my Ph.D. in chemistry, a communist point of view in the Soviet era scientific literature shocked me like few things before or since. The Soviet scientific literature had just condemned American Nobelist Linus Pauling's fundamental theory of resonance as a "dialectical materialistic error." In chemistry, this was the equivalent of saying the earth is the flat center of the universe. That and similar Soviet science policies such as Lysenko's condemnation of evolutionary theory in agriculture would dearly cost Russia and its satellites. Now, Bush's suppression of historical information is about to do the same thing.

More than Ronald Reagan's pronouncements, more than the fiction of the Strategic Defense Initiative (remember the multi billion dollar "Star Wars"?), it was Lysenko's wrong headed communist science applied to agriculture that brought the Soviet economy to its knees. Now, an analogous Bush tyranny by suppression of scholarly efforts to get at historical government records is about to do a similar thing to America.

Tyranny isn't bad merely because it feels bad, but as shown by Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, and Joseph Stalin's Communist Soviet Union, it inevitably falls apart. Now, George W. Bush is taking America down a similar path and, like other tyrants, he is accomplishing this by making certain kinds of information forbidden. By cutting off access to previous presidents' letters and government records, Bush is preventing political scientists and historical scholars from producing vital analysis of past policy failures which must not be repeated because the cost is too high.

Recently, in California, the Bush administration has been fighting in federal court to keep University of California political science professor Larry Berman from seeing 40-year-old documents from Lyndon Johnson's presidency.

Cocco writes, "This [Bush] government's argument today is that these are the crown jewels," Berman said in an interview. The author of several books on Johnson and the Vietnam War, Berman requested briefs from 1965 and 1968. Other presidential intelligence briefs from the Johnson White House were made public in the early 1990s and are posted on the Internet. We have not, since then, been attacked by the Vietnamese. Nor have we suffered from release of two briefs relating to terrorism that were published by the 9/11 investigative commission."

But true tyranny needs no justification other than its own power.

Seeds of Tyranny

On March 23, 2001 -- a few weeks after Bush's presidential inauguration -- Alberto Gonzales, then White House counsel, instructed the official United States archivist to delay release of thousands of President Ronald Reagan's papers. The papers were scheduled to be made public under a Watergate-era law that provides for the release of unclassified presidential documents.

Gonzales' directive, written six months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, had given Bush an all-purpose justification for stopping public access to government information. The directive was followed by an executive order that would vastly expand Bush's power. Now he could not only keep his own presidential papers secret, but those of presidents before him -- perhaps especially those connected with his father, George Bush Senior. Bush claims this authority even if a former president wants them made public. The order is being challenged in court by scholars and journalists.

More recently, a veteran CIA officer was fired from her job and stands accused of leaking information about the U.S. maintaining secret overseas prisons for supposed terrorists. Her lawyer says she is not responsible for the leak and did not have access to the information that wound up in the Washington Post story on the secret prisons. Now, government investigators are on the trail of whoever it was that revealed to The New York Times the probably illegal (bypassing the courts and Congress) wiretapping of Americans authorized by the president. But don't expect "loyal" Republican and toothless Democrat legislators to straighten that one out anytime soon.

Meanwhile, Bush has allowed intelligence, military, and other government agencies to remove files at the National Archives, reclassifying thousands of documents that had previously been public, dating back to the Korean War and World War II. Having considered them benign for decades, the State Department had already published many of them in official histories. Archives officials announced in April that about a quarter of the documents had been reclassified by the Bush administration in a way that was "clearly inappropriate."

Ironically, just a few weeks earlier, the U.S. government declared victory after its long effort to get Germany to open a trove of Holocaust files. The accuracy of history itself was at stake in obtaining information from those World War II papers. But now the Bush government is emulating what Hitler's Germany had done over 60 years ago: revising history with misleading public pronouncements called talking points.

Earlier in history, such lies had simply been called propaganda. Experience shows that publicly repeating talking points/propaganda to a mass audience can effectively form reality for up to half of the U.S. citizens -- for awhile. It worked for Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin -- so then why not for Bush?

What remains to be seen: will America succumb to Bush's tyranny and suffer a fate similar to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Communist Soviet Union?

Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. You can email Fred at <a href="mailto:Fred@interventionmag.com">Fred@interventionmag.com</a>.

Posted Saturday, May 20, 2006

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
Go ahead invite Yoda to a Frog leg dinner

Duluth, MN (PRWEB) May 30, 2006 -- The latest audio tape attributed to Osama bin Laden appears to be one more installment in a succession of evidence fabricated by the US government to deceive the American people, according to Scholars for 9/11 Truth. "This tape is only the latest in a series of fabrications intended to mislead the American people," said James H. Fetzer, the society's founder. "The closer we get to revealing the truth about 9/11, the more furiously the government fights to conceal it!" He said members of Scholars and other experts had detected evidence of fakery.

In this new recording, a voice attributed to Osama bin Laden asserts that Zacarias Moussaoui was not involved in 9/11, which he knew to be the case because he had personally assigned the 19 hijackers involved in those events. The Osama of this tape thereby implicitly confesses his responsibility for orchestrating the attacks. However, in a tape released on December 27, 2001, the authenticity of which is not in doubt, Osama denied having had anything to do with 9/11. "Moreover," Fetzer added, "some of the 19 hijackers he 'personally assigned' have turned up alive and well."

To be sure, this new tape is not the first one in which bin Laden appears to take responsibility for the attacks. As David Ray Griffin, a prominent member of Scholars, points out, "The Osama on the video tape that appeared on December 13, 2001, confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks. But he is far darker and much heavier than the real Osama bin Laden. People can see the difference by looking up 'The Fake bin Laden Video Tape' on Google."

Griffin's point is supported by a work-in-progress by members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which appears on its web site under the heading, "9/11: Have we been lied to?" It offers evidence of fakery in some of the videos based upon various physical properties of the figures that are presumed to be Osama, pointing out that there are differences in the ears, cheeks, eyebrows, length of the nose and shape of the nostrils. "The use of computer analysis can 'fine tune' these questions of facial characteristics," Fetzer said, "but the gross differences already show they are not the same."

Content Inconsistencies

"Another problem with the video of December 13, 2001," Griffin pointed out, "was that its stocky bin Laden praised two of the alleged hijackers, Wail M. Al-Shehri and Salem al-Hazmi, by name, and yet both the London Telegraph and the Saudi embassy reported several days after 9/11 that al-Hazmi was still alive and working in Saudi Arabia. Given the fact that the earlier video in which Osama confessed was clearly a fake, we should be suspicious of this latest apparent confession."

A professor at Duke, Bruce Lawrence, who has published Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, expressed profound skepticism about a tape that was released January 17, 2006, in a report that appeared two days later. "There's nothing in this from the Koran," Lawrence said. "He's, by his own standards, a faithful Muslim who quotes scripture in defense of his actions. There's no quotation from the Koran in the excerpts we got, no reference to specific events, no reference to past atrocities." Lawrence also observed the tape ran only 10 minutes, whereas the shortest previous tape, at 18 minutes, was nearly twice as long.

Fetzer noted that many of the same anomalous properties are found in the latest tape. "Compared to Osama's past performances," he observed, "this message is too short, too direct, and full of falsehoods. It was even described on CBS News by Bob Schieffer as 'almost American'." A translation of the text of the tape has also been released by IntelCenter, a private company that does contract work for the US government. "I suppose I would be accused of being a 'conspiracy theorist' to suggest there is any connection," Fetzer added.

Authentic Voice/Fake Content

Informed that Reuters news agency has reported confirmation that the voice on the tape is indeed that of Osama bin Laden, Fetzer replied, "The fact that the voice is his does not prove that the tape is authentic. We have had phony tapes before using voices that were authentic. Mark Bingham, a passenger on Flight 93, is supposed to have called his mother and said, 'Hi, Mom, this is Mark Bingham!' His mother confirmed it was his voice, but does anyone seriously believe that Mark Bingham would have used his last name in identifying himself to his mother?"

Griffin agreed, adding, "Back in 1999, William Arkin published an article entitled, 'When Seeing and Hearing isn't Believing' (which can also be accessed on Google). Describing the new technology of 'voice morphing' (or 'voice synthesizing'), Arkin explained that, if audio technicians have a recording of your voice, then they can create a tape in which your voiceâ¹your authentic voice!â¹says anything they wish."

In a press release on April 22, 2006, the Scholars observed that a tape played at the trail of Zacarias Moussaoui included discussion among the passengers about using a drink cart to break down the cabin door alleged to have been picked up on a cockpit voice recorder, which does not record conversations in the passenger cabin. "This is not the first and certainly will not be the last time that the American government plays the American people for suckers," Fetzer said.

"We have just acquired new evidence that the Pentagon video tapes were processed and manipulated in an apparent effort to distort or conceal what happened there on 9/11," Fetzer observed. "Apparently, whenever the government feels the need to bolster the official myth about 9/11, it simply fabricates a new tape! Anybody who wants to keep score
should visit our web site."

Scholars for 9/11 Truth is a non-partisan society of experts and scholars dedicated to exposing falsehoods and establishing truths about the events of 9/11. It maintains a web site at st911.org, where it archives its studies, documents, records and evidence.

A former federal government undercover agent confesses the truth of his involvement with the Waco Massacre, the Oklahoma City Federal Building Bombing, and his involvement in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, as well as 9/11.

From Our Phone Room

Click here to hear.

<img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/hmm2.gif" alt="" title="hmm2" />

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
Go ahead invite Yoda to a Frog leg dinner

I will never forget 911.
We heard about the first plane hitting the Towers, while driving to work.
By the time We got to work, the hotel had set up Tv's in the employees lounge outside my office.When the first tower came down, I commented to the Head Engineer of the Hotel; that those popping sounds were blasting caps and explosives.We had a argument until the second Tower came down with the Same popping sounds. His mouth dropped and he would never discuss 911 with me again!
I was raised using blasting caps, during my youth and later as a coal miner.I also worked for Invirex, doing demo work.

Digital audio analysis should prove if those sounds were Steel snapping
or high explosives!
<img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/cheers.gif" alt="" title="cheers" />

Quote:Saturday, June 03, 2006
Bombs Heard in the Twin Towers
Forget all of the videos and photos of the collapse of the World Trade Centers for a minute. Let's talk about an aspect of 9/11 that we've all glossed over: sound.

The following earwitness testimony indicates controlled demolition of the Twin Towers:

Firefighter stated "it almost sounded like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight" (page 4; original is .pdf; Google's webpage version is here)

Paramedic said "at first I thought it was -- do you ever see professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear pop pop pop pop pop -- thats exactly what because thought it was" (page 9)

Paramedic captain stated "somewhere around the middle of the world trade center there was this orange and red flash coming out initially it was just one flash then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode the popping sound and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as could see these popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger going both up and down and then all around the building" (pdf file; Google's web version is here).

Police office stated "you would hear a loud boom go off at the top of tower one. As the building continued to burn and emergency equipment kept on responding stirring up the dust and debris in the streets. After approximately 15 minutes suddenly there was another loud boom at the upper floors, then there was a series of smaller explosions which appeared to go completely around the building at the upper floors. And another loud earth-shattering blast with a large fire ball which blew out more debris and at that point everyone began to run north on West Broad Street." (page 5, which is page 2 of a hand-written memorandum)

Police offer stated "we kept hearing explosions that would shake the whole room" Fire chief from a nearby town heard a "high-pitched noise and a popping noise" right before the collapse of the South Tower

CNN producer stated "every few minutes you'll hear like a small sort of a rumbling sound, almost like an explosion sound and another chunk of it will come flying down into the street"; same producer stated "there was just a huge ... [explosion? word apparently erased from original CNN video] and enormous pieces of debris just falling - one right after the other"

Highly-reputable astrophysicist wrote in an email that, immediately before the collapse of each of the twin towers, he heard explosions and low-frequency rumbles (he also uses the phrase "demolition-style implosion")

British newspaper stated "some eyewitnesses reported hearing another explosion just before the structure crumbled."

NYC firefighter stated âIt actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit. . . [W]e originally had thought there was like an internal detonation, explosives, because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down.â

Employee of an insurance company in south tower heard an explosion from BELOW the impact of the airplane, an "exploding sound" shook the building

Paramedic "heard ground level explosions" (page 29)

Detective for the Port Authority reported, long before the collapse of the tower, "When we reached the 15th floor, the building began to vibrate and shake. I heard loud explosions and rumblings in the background. The stairwell shifted and gave out a large metal on metal groan. The stairwell then twisted back into place with another loud groan. The lights went out. At that point the stairwell became filled with smoke and dust." (pages 58 & 59, which is page 2 & 3 of a memo from the Office of Inspector General)

CBS News reporter stated "All of a sudden I heard a roar and I saw one of the towers blow ... I saw from street level as though it exploded up, a giant rolling ball of flame...". (same reporter stated "I hear simultaneously this roar and see what appears to be a gigantic fireball rising up at ground level . . . I remember seeing this giant ball of fire come out of the earth as I heard this roar" (pages 119 & 239))

Port Authority Police Department officer, who was intimately familiar with the World Trade Center from his years of police duties patrolling there, described how the hallway began to shudder as a "terrible deafening roar" swept over him, then a giant fireball exploded in the street seconds before the south tower collapsed

MSNBC reporter stated "I heard a second explosion ... And then a fire marshal came in and said we had to leave, because if there was a third explosion this building might not last".

Firefighter stated "I ... started to hear that rumbling sound again. I looked up, and the first thing I saw was the aerial on the top of the tower just rocking one way and rocking the other way, and all of a sudden there it goes"(pages 14-15)

Paramedic said âShortly before the first tower came down, I remember feeling the ground shaking. I heard a terrible noise, and then debris just started flying everywhere. People started running" (pages 5 & 6)

Is this an alien invasion? Or the latest government program? And since the outbreaks seem centered in the South Texas immigrant zone, illegal aliens can spread it all over America. Or will this be the pretext for the latest Neocon New Orleans, a race war between the beleaguered whites and the manipulated Mexicans, now suddenly carrying a dangerous disease and worthy of slaughter by righteous and ignorant whites?

Or how about Haditha? U.S. Marines butchering 24 defenseless women and children in their insane vengeance for a blown-up friend. As John MacArthur, publisher of Harperâs Magazine, wrote in the Providence Journal (6/6/06):

âIf we're to punish anyone for Haditha, we should start with President Bush and the congressmen, including Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, who sent Roel Briones and Kilo Company on a murder-suicide mission in which there can be no justice.â

Thatâs the mainstream version. On the deeper level that keeps Iraq seething because of constant provocations by Mossad/mercenary hit teams blowing up mosques, this now-famous American atrocity merely verifies the perception of America and its British and Israeli overlords as conscienceless brigands who have essentially NEVER kept any promise they ever made, and the rest of the world stands warned.

This is the karma that awaits Americaâs future generations. Karma is always repaid in full.

But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. The news is always bad, or it wouldn't be news. But do you ever come across events that make you surprised that they didn't teach you that in school, because they're so basic and important? Like the privatizing of American banks in 1913 that guaranteed corporations â fictional and deceptive conceptual constructs â would one day rule every conceivable aspect of your existence? Hermes, the God of Thieves, must have smiled. Since that time, freedom has become just another commodity for sale in the marketplace, and most of you reading this simply donât have the money to buy it.

As one who had kept himself outside of the consensus mainstream for my entire life, I have very recently learned something news, something I hadnât previously understood. Unless you understand what's really going on inside yourself, you can't hope to get a truly accurate picture of what's happening in the world.

Sure, anybody with a brain can discern the obvious hoax perpetrated on all of us by our supposedly own government in 2001, with 9/11 horror stories seared into our minds that we soon learned were phantom hijackers, deliberately exploded towers, and hollow men like Bush, Clinton, Sharon and Silverstein collecting monstrous insurance payouts a short while later. Did you initially believe the lies? Do you still? Or are you still rapt in the hollow accounts put out by a kept corporate media intent more on enforcing the corporate commercial mindlock that in genuinely informing anybody about anything? The Spin cycle has taken over reality. Have you realized it yet?

But how about that thing that spins inside you? Inside us? Inside me? I can only speak for myself.

What is the purpose of our efforts? To inform? Or to profit? How am I spun, and how do I spin myself?

Do you understand the joy of speaking to someone where you can comfortably acknowledge that you both share a higher purpose, no matter what name you put on it?

I am someone who was once popular but is now mostly shunned by a brittle majority afraid to speak openly about Hebrew history and the real forces that control our puppet politicians who scorch our planet with so many Dr. Strangelove schemes.

Itâs a simple proposition to understand. Who controls the money? Who always controls the money? And who, by virtue of their control of money, controls every single bit of information you receive, no matter how clever you think you are in exploring backwater websites and finding quaint old libraries.

You canât talk about a certain subject. And that subject turns out to be the No. 1 problem in the world. Only in most European countries, laws prevent you from even talking about it.

This phenomenon is at the very heart of the mindlock. It is a stain that has spread to the four corners of the world and can easily be found â in banks, and in virtually every print publication, and on every TV screen.

And every aspect of your life is now subject to a Kosher stamp of one form or another.

Dr. Strangeloves like Rumsfeld and the Bushes are merely the executors of orders from higher financial realms, situated on posh estates in Europe that are inextricably linked to the worldwide network of the forces of capital which rule human hearts like a chimera distinctly resembling that grisly parasite now known as Morgellonâs disease. When you try to grab it and root it out, it slips away. And it ruins your life.

The result of such a slippery coven of inbred billionaires ruling the world with deception and impunity down through time can be explained in one word: Haditha.

The power of money worms through our hearts until we mistake it for our life-giving blood. Whatâs it going to be? Your blood or your money? You know the answer. We take the money as long as itâs someone elseâs blood.

A very American philosophy, wouldnât you say?

Or is it? Some would say itâs a Hebrew philosophy, and that the religions that were created subsequently are also Hebrew constructs. So maybe itâs a Jewish philosophy, although that doesnât explain the White Protestant extermination of the North American natives throughout the 1800s.

I already was an American who saw the facade that masked the killer machine. From smallpox blankets for the Pequot Indians as white Europe slaughtered the red aboriginals, to the bogus exercise these money masters staged in New York on 9/11, American history is the pits.

Murder by self-justification. The lie we tell ourselves.

But I was not a human being who walked the talk, who could see the heart of the beast, and yet failed to slay it. I did not practice what I preached. Even though I posed the question â what do we do? â I did not answer it.

As someone who was tossed off website after website for uttering a single phrase â âEverything Zionists do is justified by the Talmudâ â I had yet to make anyone see what I meant by that. Most people are zoned in behind a facade of misinformation that masquerades as mainstream education. It makes them more willing, as we know all too well, to go
fight and die after first swearing allegiance to obvious lies.

No one person or ethnic group is doomed or damned because of their lineage. Anyone can overcome any handicap with the right knowledge and determination.

It is all a matter of belief. We do what we believe.

Except when itâs a cover, a false nobility, a shredded honesty.

When you say you love something â or stand for something â you better stand by that something, or what you say isnât true.

It is in that vein that I wish to discuss certain inconveniences that have come my way as a result of what I have previously written.

Booted unceremoniously off one popular website for a story I consider spurious â an event preceded by Jon Carlsonâs laughable hit piece about me on rense.com (which Rense himself insisted he hadnât read) alleging I was Naval intelligence. And then generally excluded from websites that had previously embraced me, all because I used the word Jew.

And challenged the orthodox version of the so-called Holocaust. And 9/11. And the Iraq war. And Americaâs motivation in general. And most especially, the obvious influences exerted in all walks of life by the Jewish community, which camouflages its efforts behind the labels Zionist and Israeli in a mostly successful attempt to evade criminal charges for its horrid manipulations in the general categories of money and media.

Are there any Americans remaining who think the good ole USA is actually following a noble path? If so, what kind of poison is in your water that has totally addled your mind? And why canât you see the effect Jewish influence has had on us all? Donât you hear the Iraqis and Palestinians screaming as they starve?

Donât you think thereâs a reason why you canât talk about these things in public? Itâs because theyâre true, obviously.

Much confusion about motivation has ensued these last four years following the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York. The one thing we know for sure is that 9/11 was the trigger event for overt oppression by the United States on two (and hundreds) more impoverished countries, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Who is the chief beneficiary of both wars? Who are the men who make the money from these transactions? And who handles just about all of the money?

When you attempt to think of âgoodâ members of this group who seem to be playing a constructive role in solving our problems, ask yourself if their efforts are genuine? Donât they so often seem to defend Jewish innocence to the degree that they obliterate the actual question in a tsunami of triviality and charges of anti-Semitism.

Are you really insisting you donât know who controls the money?

All these Jewish writers â Chomsky, Blum, William Rivers Pitt, and that ilk â always pinpoint the American disease without properly identifying its underlying Jewish influence. Because that is their purpose. To conceal the name of the true perpetrators in an intellectual blizzard of superficial detail.

I have chosen the path I thought was best, and most of you have turned your backs on me. Readers should know that. And editors can gauge their shuddering integrity by it, as well.

The litmus question of our age is this. Will the human herd realize the influences that control them, and identify the one shadowy group that always rises to the top, then dominates and destroys the land it plunders?

John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida whose Internet essays have been seen on hundreds of websites around the world. They have been collected into three anthologies, the latest of which â âRecipe for Extinctionâ â is available at http://www.johnkaminski.com/

Never invite a Yoda to a frog leg dinner.
Go ahead invite Yoda to a Frog leg dinner